CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2023-33176 — BigBlueButton is an open source virtual classroom designed to help teachers teach and learners learn

Medium CVSS 6.5

BigBlueButton is an open source virtual classroom designed to help teachers teach and learners learn. In affected versions are affected by a Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) vulnerability. In an `insertDocument` API request the user is able to supply a URL from which the presentation should be downloaded. This URL was being used without having been successfully validated first. An update to the `followRedirect` method in the `PresentationUrlDownloadService` has been made to validate all URLs to be used for presentation download. Two new properties `presentationDownloadSupportedProtocols` and `presentationDownloadBlockedHosts` have also been added to `bigbluebutton.properties` to allow administrators to define what protocols a URL must use and to explicitly define hosts that a presentation cannot be downloaded from. All URLs passed to `insertDocument` must conform to the requirements of the two previously mentioned properties. Additionally, these URLs must resolve to valid addresses, and these addresses must not be local or loopback addresses. There are no workarounds. Users are advised to upgrade to a patched version of BigBlueButton.

Severity
Medium
CVSS
6.5 (3.1)
Published
2023-06-26
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
software/application
Weaknesses
CWE-918

Affected products

  • bigbluebutton / bigbluebutton

Showing 1 representative product identities from 2 source matches. Confirm exact affected versions with the linked vendor and NVD evidence.

Matched remediation archetype

Server-side request forgery and unintended proxying

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Check exposure

  • Inventory server-side URL fetchers, webhooks, importers, previews, redirects, proxies, and protocol handlers reachable from untrusted input.
  • Map egress paths to internal services, metadata endpoints, loopback, private address space, and privileged control planes.
  • Review DNS resolution, redirect, proxy, credential-forwarding, and URL parsing behavior without requesting sensitive targets.

Remediate safely

  • Replace arbitrary destinations with named integrations or a strict allowlist of schemes, hosts, ports, and paths.
  • Resolve and validate every destination and redirect hop, then enforce egress policy independently of application checks.
  • Remove ambient credentials and sensitive headers from fetchers; apply response size, time, and content limits.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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